Market value could grow 15% with 3G
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Non-voice services soon: True exec
The value of the Thai telecom-service market next year is expected to be 13 to 15 per cent higher than this year’s level, driven by third-generation cellular broadband service, said Adhiruth Thotaveensaksuk, managing director for mobile-phone business at True Corp.
The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has scheduled the auction of the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum for 3G service for October 16.
The telecom market this year is predicted to surge 11 per cent to about Bt200 billion, of which about Bt50 billion is expected to be from non-voice services, up by 30-40 per cent from Bt36 billion last year, Adhiruth said. If the auction of the 2.1GHz spectrum takes place as planned, the non-voice-service market next year could again grow by 30-40 per cent, he added.
Provision of 2.1GHz-3G service will be the game changer, but it is expected to take three to five years before it becomes massively adopted, he said.
True’s subsidiary Real Move has launched a 3G service on the 850-megahertz spectrum under the TrueMove H brand. It targets 4 million subscribers by the end of this year, double the current level.
Real Move plans to increase the number of 3G base stations to 13,500 by year-end or early next year from the present 7,000 nationwide.
Smart-phone growth surges
Meanwhile, high demand for smart phones and basic-feature phones in Southeast Asia’s fast-developing markets has continued to drive buoyant performances in the mobile-phone sector, according to the latest results from the global market research company GfK Asia.
In the past 12 months, sales of more than 118 million units across the seven key markets in the region – Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines – brought the total worth of the mobile-phone sector to almost US$137 billion (Bt4.2 trillion).
Consumers in the region also bought 10 million feature phones, some 12 per cent more than in the previous year. However, it is the intensifying popularity of smart phones that is accounting for the larger proportion of the market.
GfK findings point to a greatly increased smart-phone purchase rate of 78 per cent across the seven countries to account for more than 61 per cent of the mobile-phone sector’s overall value in Southeast Asia.
“Feature phones still reign as the more prevalent mobile-phone type used by consumers in the region’s emerging markets,” said Gerard Tan, GfK account director for digital technology. “However, smart-phone adoption is escalating at a rapid pace, with individual countries’ growth rates reported in the range of 42 to 326 per cent.”
The world’s fourth-most-populous nation, Indonesia, is not surprisingly the region’s largest smart-phone market. Its combined sales of feature phones and smart phones grew by 26 per cent in volume, with individual segments reflecting growth of 19 and 56 per cent respectively.
Although nearly four in every five mobile phones sold in Indonesia are still feature phones because of their greater affordability, an increasing number of consumers are embracing smart phones, which registered soaring sales of 4.5 million units over the previous year.
The Philippines continues to report huge growth of 326 per cent in smart-phone sales volume, rendering it the fastest-growing market for such devices in Southeast Asia. It is also the country with the highest jump in smart-phone market share within a year, from 9 to 24 per cent.
“Unlike the more developed countries like Singapore and Malaysia, smart-phone sales-penetration levels in some of the less developed markets such as Thailand and Vietnam are still relatively low, at 19 and 11 per cent respectively, leaving a significant portion of the population still available for potential growth,” Tan said.
Consumers in Southeast Asia spent some $8.75 billion on almost 29 million smart phones over the past 12 months, translating to growth of 61 per cent in volume and 78 per cent in value. Findings show that smart-phone growth in the region is driven primarily by devices priced in the range of $100 to $200.
“However, with major manufacturers recently announcing their intentions to launch low-end smart phones priced below $100, the devices will be within the reach of an even larger pool of consumers and the market is expected to grow even faster when these models are made widely available,” Tan said.
